Friday, August 1, 2014

Mckinley and Noah's Tomas The Train 3rd Birthday Bash

This year we decided to shake things up and give a joint birthday party with Mckinley's best friend Mr. Noah. 3 years ago Noah was born on Mckinley's due date and my wild child was born 2 days past due and these 2 kiddos have been besties ever since. Thankfully we also consider Noah's mom and dad as some of our nearest and dearest so it was more fun than actual work. It was also pretty useful that Noah's dad Ben just happens to be a graphic designer and could make all of our invitations and goodey bag tags and my dad owns a printing company and could print everything for us. After we had our theme we were ready to start planning.

Having never had a joint birthday party before I wasn't sure how we would divide and conquer everything , but I think we did a pretty darn god job making sure everything was taken care of for the big day. It doesn't hurt that we all enjoy getting together and grilling some burgers and drinking some wine. I honestly think that is the recipe for planning a successful party. Good friends, good food, and good wine.

Once we came up with our theme and chose an invitation design we got to work on planning our menu and any other little details. My inspiration for the entire party was based around this picture I had pinned on Pinterest. After we had our set up idea we could start planning out our menu. We decided on a simple menu since our party would be at 1:00 and some people would have eaten by then, but we wanted to make sure we had enough food for those who waited to eat. We had spinach dip and chips, Cheese balls, vegetables and ranch dip, fruit, pin wheel sandwiches, pretzel dogs, pigs in a blanket, and of course it wouldn't be a party without some cake and ice cream. To drink we had sodas, water, juice, beer and sangria. All simple and easy yet it was enough to feed a hungry swimming crowd.

The night before the party I headed to my parent's house to begin the party set up. I am so glad I spent so much time prepping beforehand because I didn't want to be rushed the day of the party. I started by setting up the food table and laying down the rail road tracks. I had purchased some inexpensive plastic green table cloths to be my base layer and to make it look like grass. Next I used blue painters tape to create my rail road tracks all around the table. I really wanted to use a brown or black tape to make my tracks, and almost bought some duct tape, but I am very glad I decided to go with my gut and stick with the painters tape. I ended up having to re-position a few pieces of tape after already laying them and if I had gone with the brown duct tape I would have torn my green table clothes to shreds. The painters tape allowed me to easily pull off any piece I wanted and move it into the correct position.

After laying all of my rail road tracks I got to work on the train cars that would hold all of our food. I found these loaf trays at Kroger and after roughly figuring how many cars our train should be carrying (12) I started hot gluing on the wheels I had cut earlier in the day. This only took a few minutes since I am a glue gun master. I went ahead and set all of the cars around the table so all we would have to do was throw the food in and relax.

After my amazing track laying skills the only thing I had left to do was get the tags attached to the gummy snacks for our goodies. Noah's dad Ben took created these tags for us and I will toot my own horn here because I came up with this idea with my crazy teacher brain! I knew I wanted something train themed and this just popped into my head one night right before the party. All I did was tape a tag on each gummy and threw them in a bowl for the party guests to grab before they left.

My final party craft was super simple, but turned out so cute. I wanted something to put outside so people could find the party and I wanted something train themed of course. I recreated this cute sign I found on Pinterest and I do believe mine turned out pretty darn cute. I reused a piece of board my dad had cut while fixing a few boards on my house and a little poster board and viola we had a sign.

The only other set up we did on the party day was set out the food, fill a few balloons (I have a fear of popping balloons so I did not participate in this!), set out the drinks and throw a train track on the table.

The final touch to our decorations was of course the birthday cake that my amazing mom made. She works at a bakery, but isn't one of the cake decorators and with a little help she was able to create the most amazing Thomas The Train cake. I couldn't believe how absolutely precious it turned out!

Mckinley and Noah definitely enjoyed blowing out the candles on their own chocolate cupcakes and then Mckinley just started attacking the cake

I am calling this birthday the best most fun and relaxing so far.
To quote a line from one of Mckinley's favorite books Moosetache to sum up this birthday,
It was simple, so easy, so perfectly perfect!